Unresolved
by Rachel C. Astrid
Summary: She doesn't know how much of his teasing she can take. Consensual sexy power play with Season 5 Caskett. 13 chapters toeing a fine line between smut and genuine character development. Look for more to come in the Unresolved universe.
1. Chapter 1

Note: This story contains elements of dominance and submission within an established relationship. Reviewers tend to say that the characters' trust and care are evident, and I don't believe that this work contains triggers. However, if you're concerned or simply curious about what this entails, look up this title on Archive of Our Own and you'll see all the appropriate tags. Otherwise, suffice it to say that it is rated for language and sexual content in every chapter.

Many thanks to the readers and reviewers, especially to those who shared extensive conversations with me on this glimpse into Castle and Beckett's sex life and the characters in general: surrendersomething, theputz913, and ShannonJethroGideonCastleSnape.

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**Unresolved**

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She's not sure how her asking about story structure and the writing process has gotten them half-naked in his bed tonight, but she's not complaining. She has her man's torso leaning over her, against her, his abdomen pressing her hips into the covers as she wraps her legs around him.

Her heels find purchase in the small of his back, sometimes over bare skin and sometimes sliding down over the rough blue denim. He kisses her, soft and wet, never parting with her lips or neck as he shoves a hand beneath her back to undo her clasp. She lifts up into his bare chest, giving his deft fingers space to work, and in a moment, she feels the tension break around her bust-line and he peels the cups of the bra off of her as she slips out of the straps.

"Exposition," he huffs between kisses, and it's everything she can do to ask, "What?"

But his answer is to ditch the bra and fasten his mouth to her breast. She combs her fingers through his hair, raking his scalp until she feels the sweat begin to surface at the nape of his neck as he supports himself over her. She tries to reach for his jeans, his belt, his fly, anything that will get him that much closer to being naked—or _accessible_, at least, because that's all she really needs right now—but he's just a little too far away, so what the hell, she undoes the button and zip of her own dress pants and tries in vain to wriggle out of them with his bulk still above her.

This, of course, accomplishes little but a bit of bumping and grinding.

He reattaches to the neglected breast just as he snakes one hand between them and brushes too-lightly against her crotch. "Eager?" The fingers seek a more intimate path and she knows what they find before he speaks. "Oh. _Very _eager."

She clings to him, lamenting the loss of his touch as soon as it's gone. "Just . . ."

"Not yet." Her eyes are closed in the moment but she can hear the smile in his voice and she _hates _him, how she hates him.

She wants to use her words, he fucking loves words, but all she can wrap her mind around are the two that she thinks he most likes to hear. "Rick, _please. _Rick. . . ." The more she begs, the more it sounds as though his name is the plea and the plea is his name—and then all she can say is _Rick_.

He sucks the nipple and flicks his tongue against it until it's as hard as the first, then releases and blows softly to send a chill through her. Then his mouth is gone and making words instead of shivers and her pussy weeps for want of him. "This," he says, "is exposition. Setting up a story, revealing bits of character—like the way you like to beg to come."

"Yes," is all she can say to that, before falling back on the name-plea, unable to fathom how else to get him to put his mouth to better use; unwilling to admit that his words are actually doing it for her right now. "Rick. . . ."

"And," he adds, "that you enjoy it so much more when I delay your pleasure, no matter how much you beg."

She groans, because, yes, that's true, but she just doesn't know how much of his teasing she can take, and she knows how hard he is to convince when he has his mind set on something.

He leans in and meets her eye, pursing his lips and licking them as though he's tasting an irresistible idea: "Let's take a shower."

He begins to get up but doesn't go far. The bed shifts beneath them, and she can almost hear the _creak creak creak _of the good fuck she isn't getting. With both hands he grips the fabric of her pants at her hips and hoists her up that way; drags her ass to the edge of the bed before divesting her of pants and panties in one go.

It's only now that she's naked but untouched, unencumbered, that she has the presence of mind to string together a coherent argument—that they could always just shower _afterward_—but then his pants and boxers are around his ankles and his erection springs free and the words never even make it from her mind to her mouth. She's leading the way to the bathroom as he's still stepping out of his clothes.


	2. Chapter 2

He doesn't usually make her wait this long. She estimates the time and she knows how pitiful it sounds on her part—she waited four years to go to bed with him and suddenly she can't hold out for fifteen minutes?—but the truth is that she's been spoiled, and she knows it. Castle is a generous and persistent lover and despite their late start, she's fairly sure that orgasms have already surpassed cups of coffee in number.

Of course there have been times that they had other things they needed to do, nights they slept apart. But when they were together, he would tease and deny her for only moments at a time, working her up to a greater release, always delivering _somehow_. There were times that he wouldn't stop until she told him she couldn't take any more. He has simply never purposely stoked her fires only to leave her burning unattended; never made her go about other menial tasks while she was still so distracted with the thought of sex.

For the first few minutes of their shower, he insists on actually bathing. Not that she minds him massaging her scalp or lavishing her skin with soapy love, and his particular care of her genitals is sweet and tender if not exactly sexy. Shamelessly, she gyrates a little to try to send him the message, but he carries on as though a professional ignoring the involuntary responses of someone he's not allowed to touch with lust. It makes the whole thing that much worse and suddenly she thinks she understands why her _inattention _to Castle still kept him coming back for four years.

Then the soaps and shampoos are set aside and her jaw is in his hands as he tongues her mouth, bites her lip, and pulls a moan from her. The rush of water beats down on them—his water pressure is so much better than hers, his heat much more reliable, and the spray of his shower always covers them more completely so they're less likely to get cold, but she shivers anyway—and as she leans into him, the feel of him engorged against her makes her body clench around the nothingness inside her.

He hovers at her ear, and inside she thinks, _this is it, it's time, _but he is a tease like she's never known tonight; he simply says, "Rising action."

She swallows to speak, gathering her patience to play along with this compellingly lovable jackass. "Because you're at attention?" she asks, pressing suggestively but ineffectually against his hard-on. (There. She can do this, too.)

"Cute, but no." And then he's teething her earlobe, whispering in his Shower Sex voice even as he leaves her hanging: "Because it makes you realize how badly you want the climax."

And oh, she realizes. She wonders how much more he intends for her to realize.

His teeth scrape along her jaw, and for the first time she notices her lips are parted. She closes them as though it will do her any good against the onslaught of his mouth; his language alone is enough to make her languish, weak-kneed, never mind what he's doing with teeth and tongue.

"All of this? All of this is rising action." His fingers are trailing now; traveling the planes of her stomach and sinking, swirling at her core, sweeping inside her. "And it just builds and builds there. . . ."

He works her just enough that her vaginal walls try to suck his fingers deeper until he escapes at will; in the midst of his too-modest ministrations, she feels a hiccup of an orgasm come and go, just like that. And she's looking for an inoffensive way to express, _that's it?_ until she realizes that he knows exactly what he's doing to her—what he's _not doing_.

He says far too happily, "There may be little resolutions along the way, of course, but the main conflict still hangs in the balance," and she wants to eat the smirk off his face.

Yeah. That's what she's doing. She's not kissing him hard just to turn him on so much that he'll give up this ridiculous game and play with her properly. That would be desperate, manipulative. She just wants to humble him a little.

Or maybe she just wants him to stop fucking with her and fuck her already.

She tells him so.

He laughs.

He _laughs._

She grabs his cock to see if he's still laughing.

He hums, but in an almost ambivalent sort of way.

His smile is so sexy, even under the circumstances. She likes to see him this relaxed, confident.

But what fun would this be if she didn't get duly pissed off?

"I don't think you appreciate the delicacy of your situation," she enunciates between breaths, giving him a squeeze.

He's unfazed. She's not sure that she's ever seen him so _unfazed_. "Well," he says, "if it's appreciation you want," and he pushes her back against the shower wall and wedges one leg between her thighs, their hips touching but not aligned, a slant rhyme in the midst of prose.


	3. Chapter 3

She gasps in surprise, her hand at her side still gripped around his cock, and before she can even think to release him, he wraps his hand around hers, guiding her to slide along the wet shaft.

She loves it when he shows her exactly what he likes. Not that she doesn't occasionally enjoy taking the initiative, but she finds it all the more satisfying to know exactly how much she's pleasuring him.

Eventually she makes a play to angle them for penetration—because isn't that the obvious course of action?—but their hips are hopelessly askew and the hand-over-hand hold means he's controlling their movements; the height difference isn't quite right and he won't lift her up and his weight is still against her, trapping her at the wall. The best she can do is to hump his leg while they stroke him off and she whines at the inordinate effort.

Seriously, even with physical fitness and a dedicated partner, sex can be so much more work than it is in stories. A lot turns her on, but not every little thing gets her off. That's why Castle's track record is as impressive as it is.

"Water's getting cold," he murmurs. She hasn't noticed. She realizes she hasn't noticed because she can barely even feel the spray from the showerhead anymore; he is towering before her, bearing the brunt of the water on his back. They're only just getting to the point when the warmth of their frenetic activity, contained as it is, no longer keeps the chill at bay.

Given the circumstances, her voice is more persuasive than she thinks it needs to be when she says, "We'll continue this in the bedroom," but it's been too long since she's had her way and she's eager to influence the agenda, even if it's only to relocate them.

He nips her lobe and tells her no. "We're just going to speed things along."

She thinks she likes the sound of that—she's been ready for how long now?—but she's less sure the moment that he stills their hands over his shaft and starts thrusting into them instead. The jerking of his hips pins her more firmly to the shower wall, and even in the staccato beats of reprieve, she doesn't have nearly as much space to rub against his leg, which is too slick to provide the right friction anyway. His motions alone are just not enough for her and—oh.

He's just getting himself off.

With her hand.

She wonders whether she should be indignant, but other than the palpable frustration knotted inside her, she minds less than she might have expected. A moment ago, all she could think about was being fucked senseless, but with his hand over hers encasing his cock, his solid frame thrusting in place as he chases his own release, her mind races with every memory of his pleasure and every desire to give it to him now, right now.

She's as desperate to make him come undone as she is to become undone.

Fleetingly she wonders how much of that selflessness is lust and how much of that is love, and then she swallows down the intrusive thoughts that she just doesn't have it in her to peel apart right now. She swallows them down and instead devotes her energy to panting audibly over the sound of pounding water.

She can tell that's got Castle's heart racing, so she sighs a breathy _Rick _that's not so much a plea as exaltation, all of her awe at his power and strength and sexiness poured into one syllable, and then she moans like being bumped up against the shower without personal gratification is just what she's always wanted.

It's one of the hottest things they've done all month. But it doesn't make her moan involuntarily.

With mischief in her eyes, she makes it no secret that she's affecting these sounds solely for his pleasure. She doesn't think he minds. A soft sound escapes him, too, like he wants to say something but he's fucking busy right now and whatever it is can wait.

Just like her.

At least he's giving her something to do, something to watch.

Not being entirely distracted with the throes of release herself, she can see the precise moment that he short-circuits. Although she can't see or feel his ejaculate, his knitted brows and slackened jaw and closed eyes are all the confirmation she needs.

God, he's gorgeous. This is gorgeous. She loves that she can simply watch and appreciate his pleasure, that he lets her have this moment without hiding himself or distracting her. She'd be glad to return the favor.

He stills his thrusts and seems to need a moment longer than necessary to remember that his hand is over hers and that he can let go now. It was clearly a particularly welcome release.

She doesn't usually keep score like this, but she hopes he knows he fucking owes her for this one.

And just like that, the distraction of selflessness recedes into need.

Then he crumples forward over her, breathing in her shoulder, and she gets a shot of cool water in the face. She rallies from it and pushes against him without disengaging; his entire being is comparably pliable now that he's come and she uses her newfound power for the common good of reaching behind him and shutting off the water, the spray drenching the crown of her head one last time.

She shivers and silently wishes it weren't from the cold.

He holds her close and promises to warm her up, and she knows he's a man of his word.


	4. Chapter 4

He takes her towel before she's done with it.

As she reaches for it, she protests, "I'm still wet," and his brows dance and she curses under her breath.

He tosses both their towels to the counter. "You don't need this yet," he says, and she flashes him The Look he earned the morning that he shoved her into the closet. He leans down to dig into the cabinet, and she admires his ass, imagining playfully whipping it with the towel that he's taken from her.

But she's unarmed, standing naked in the middle of his bathroom, water still streaking down her skin from her hair and undoing whatever progress she'd made with the towel. She's jealous of how quickly Rick dries; despite his greater body mass, his short hair is clearly an advantage over her.

She's heartbeats away from grabbing the towel back when he stands, a blow-dryer in hand, the one she sometimes uses in the mornings before work.

Even as he extracts the cord and plugs it into the outlet on the wall, he wields the appliance like a gun, looking less like he's on-duty and more like he's about to invite her for a game of cops and robbers. Despite her greatest frustrations—and tonight is certainly no exception there—she must admit that life with Castle is nothing if not fun.

He begins to sidle up to her, eyes sporting his most suggestive gleam. "You were saying?" But it's a fairly large bathroom and he's apparently miscalculated the distance. The cord pulls taut and he looks back at the outlet as though offended at the kink in his plan.

She purses her lips and glances down to stifle the laugh. "Cord too short?" she asks, feigning innocence.

She's surprised that he doesn't play along, doesn't even narrow his eyes at her. "Come here," he orders, and the uncharacteristic command in his voice makes her insides quiver.

"You told me to stay here," she reminds him, as though genuinely confused by his conflicting instructions.

"That was when you still had a towel."

She grins. "And whose fault is that?"

He sets down the blow-dryer and confronts her directly, and her breath catches into a hard swallow as she's reminded that he's a good head taller than she is when they're naked like this. She's not only unarmed without her towel, but she has no edge on him without her heels; and sparring in the buff on the bathroom floor, while not out of the question, is not her preferred course of action.

He sets aside one still, silent moment, not a trace of indecision on his face; he's simply allowing her anticipation to build. It's working.

It's undeniably sexy when they share each other's thoughts and finish each other's sentences. But sometimes it's sexy when she has no idea what he's thinking; when he knows a story that she doesn't know—that is, if she can resist interrogating it out of him.

If she were reading one of his books right now, she would be working to read between the lines and resisting the urge to flip to the last page.

She tries to read his eyes, to channel the Castle who would say,_ if I were writing the scene_, before volunteering details, but she can't fathom a thing until he turns the page himself. Then his hands are in her hair, pulling her into him for a penetrative kiss that she didn't see coming. She answers in kind.

He untangles his fingers from her wet hair and slides one hand down her body, dragging it through all the droplets in its path—neck, shoulder, breast, hip, thigh, straight to her labia.

If one hand weren't still at the base of her skull, centering her, grounding her, the surprise might have knocked her on her ass. But he holds her steady, firm, deepening the kiss just as a long finger surges into her, his tongue and digit working in tandem, filling her mouth and pussy all at once.

He steps backward and she follows without protest or discussion, save for an open-mouthed moan as his thumb brushes her clit. She can't tell whether or not that was intentional, but she closes her eyes and tries to lean into the touch; thinks she hears him chuckle and doesn't even care.

The leaning is getting her nowhere and everywhere; he's using her own need to get her where he wants her to go—to the counter, and when she opens her eyes, she can see their reflections. The wide mirror is just low enough that she can see where his hand is sunken inside her and she wonders when he added a second finger without her even realizing.

And then she can't even wonder because her head is foggy with the effects of what he's doing down there and she thinks refusing to come when he called might be the best decision she's made all night. If she'd known how it would feel to be led across the room with his _come hither _finger inside her, she would have played hard-to-get an hour ago.

Now she's lost in the fullness of his fingers twisting into her, the hand slinking down her neck to cup her breast, his tongue circling the nipple, and she's so fucking close she can taste the profanity of bliss on her tongue. It never makes it past her lips.

He takes her orgasm before she's even had it.


	5. Chapter 5

"What the fuck was that?" At first it's the only thing she can say. It's the only thing he deserves to hear.

She's supporting herself with her hands on the counter now, and she glares back at him through the mirror as he licks his fingers clean. Futilely she blows a stray wisp of hair from her face and ignores it as it only falls back into her eyes.

"Let me guess. The inciting incident?"

He's got this playfully pensive look, squinting off into the distance. "No, the inciting incident happened weeks ago, when you—"

"Castle, I wasn't serious." She straightens her spine and crosses her arms, still only watching him through the mirror. If she faces him for real she might hit him.

"Oh. Blowing off some steam then?"

"It's the only blowing that's happening tonight."

"I beg to differ."

She's just opening her mouth to argue when he picks up the hairdryer and clicks a button that makes it purr with life.

Then he stands behind her, gently blow-drying her long hair. Gone is the neighbor-boy looking to play cops and robbers. This is tender. The gesture softens her. She tilts her head and closes her eyes and lets him work.

"You were getting cocky," he says, rousing her from her floating reverie with a woefully poor choice of words. He murmurs, "The best decision _you've_ made all night?" and she wonders if she actually said that out loud earlier; silently tries to retrace her steps but can't quite get there from here.

He guides the blow-dryer over her shoulders, back, upper arms; the movement just fast enough and the distance just far enough that the heat feels sensual on her skin, like she's being wrapped in warmth that slowly loosens and unfurls again.

This time when she hears him she's hyperaware of him. His voice and the warmth are everything. "You thought you did something to make me make you come," he says. "Like making sex sounds when you didn't mean them—it makes you feel like you're in control."

He says it so frankly and it flusters her. They rely so heavily on subtext and body language, and even when they get their wires crossed, the miscommunications are safer than the words that bare everything. She's been naked all this time but it's only now that she feels truly exposed. When she meets her own eyes in the mirror she wants nothing more than to wrap herself up in the warm air and never come out.

But she forces herself out of her imaginary cocoon and finds her voice stronger than she expects. "You said you wanted to speed things along," she reminds him. "My contribution obviously helped the cause. Besides, what are you so upset about? You got off, didn't you?"

One quick click and then cool air hits her crotch, and when she can't help but breathe _oh_ he seems just as pleased as she is. "If I want you to pant and sigh and moan, you'll know it." And then it's back to warmth in motion all along her limbs.

It's hard to chide him while he's teasing her so deliciously and caring for her so tenderly all at once, but it would be a crime to let the power go to his head. "Hm. This bossiness doesn't become you." She tries to say it like she means it, but it might be as hollow as her moans in the shower.

He switches off the blow-dryer, sets it down. He shadows her closely, tucking her rogue tendril behind her ear and making eye contact with her reflection. "You're allowed to enjoy this, you know," he breathes at her temple. "I don't think any less of you for it and you shouldn't, either."

He's got an answer for everything and this one gives her too much to think and nothing to say.

So they exchange silence, nothing but a few breaths, and then he reaches past her for their toothbrushes and hands her one. They brush and spit and rinse—having long accepted the good and the bad and the ugly in each other, at least when it comes to personal hygiene—and it's like any other night until he's teasing her with fresh kisses and slipping a finger into her mouth and telling her to suck it like she sucks his cock.

"You wish this finger were somewhere else, don't you?" he goads. "Get it good and wet. You want it to slide into you and you were just dried off."

By the time he withdraws the digit, her lips chase it involuntarily, and he lets her press her forehead to his. Then he's slipping between her lower lips, circling her clit without actually touching it and teasing at her entrance. He slides inside her no further than the first joint and smiles, sharing the air between them and snatching it up in a satisfied chuckle.

"You're already wet again."

He proves it. He brings his finger back up to her mouth, slicking her lips with her own arousal before sliding over her tongue. This time she starts sucking without being asked.


	6. Chapter 6

"You're enjoying that, aren't you? I bet you taste good."

She hums approval, locking eyes with him as she swirls her tongue against him.

"Ask for my cock."

With his finger still in her mouth, she murmurs messily around it: "I want your cock."

"No," he says. "This isn't the part where you get what you want. It's just another plot point."

Oh, fucking hell. She wants to tell him to stop plotting.

But this isn't the part where she gets what she wants. And maybe she wants this very thing more than she admits, and maybe he knows that just as well as she does. There's an entire conversation happening between them now; one told only through eyes and lips and willing obedience.

So she sucks.

He thrusts into her mouth a few times, and the motion triggers another level of arousal inside her. She feels an even greater ache at her core; a feeling of emptiness and openness that she wishes he would fill. It's the feeling she gets when they've had their best foreplay, and if by then Rick is still committed to whatever it is he's doing so well, she usually tells him point-blank that she needs him inside her.

Usually he complies.

Right now she isn't so sure. And she has his thick finger in her mouth, and trying to talk around it once was already embarrassing enough. She really needs him inside her—his cock, his fingers, anything to ease the aching feeling—but she doesn't want to mumble her desires only to have him deny her outright again.

The predicament finally surfaces in the form of a devastating whimper. She hates the sound, so involuntary and weak to her ears, but if he takes pity on her now, she'll hate it a little less.

He removes his finger and kisses her lips, telling her how well she did, and she thinks he's about to attend to her pussy until he steps away completely. She nearly collapses from disappointment, a feeling she doesn't often need to face in sex with Castle. It's even harder to endure it knowing that he's disappointing her on purpose, which is the last thing she ever would have expected from him.

The thought of it hurts and she can do nothing but hope and wait, and haven't they both had enough of the hoping and waiting by now? Can't they just enjoy finally being together, spending every spare moment making each other feel good? Whose bright idea was it to stray from such a pleasurable routine?

His deep voice penetrates her thoughts; he tells her he trusts her to finish up in the bathroom without giving in to _finishing up—_he thinks he's so clever—and then he takes the towel with him to the bedroom.

Her towel. The one he said she didn't need _yet_.

A twinge of anticipation bubbles up in her, dispelling the disappointment. He obviously has something planned for her, and she's looking forward to finding out just what he has in mind.

She wastes no time in the bathroom, but she makes sure she's as clean and sweet-smelling and sexy as can be by the time she emerges. Hoping a memorable entrance will win her a prize, she leans her naked body against the doorframe with her limbs angled in all the most flattering ways. All the lights are off except for one dim lamp, and she hasn't even set eyes on him when she singsongs, "Oh, Castle. . . ."

He comes out of nowhere. He scoops her up into his arms and starts walking toward the bed, and even though he's dead serious, the whole thing makes her laugh. She's resisting the urge to tease him about not carrying her over the threshold; she's not sure whether she's resisting for his sake or for hers. Either way, she's pretty sure it's too soon for marriage humor—or too late, since it was easier to joke about those kinds of things before they were together.

He tosses her down on the bed, and she's surprised at the brusqueness of the act, but she's even more surprised to land on something that isn't his soft linen sheets. It's her bath towel, spread out beneath her.

Then he's gripping the towel and using it to drag her to the end of the bed. Without preamble, he shoves her knees apart and sinks his mouth to her aching center. His face is still buried in her when he murmurs, just as messily as she did with his finger between her lips, "Mm, you do taste good," and she groans from the vibrations of his growl and the sheer relief of his touch.

If she can't have his cock, she'll gladly take his mouth. She's not exactly settling.


	7. Chapter 7

It's some of his best work. Licking, sucking, flicking, fucking her with his tongue until she's the one who's breathless, her hands in his hair.

When he raises his head to look at her, it isn't the way he usually admires her writhing. He seems to be gauging how much more of this she can take. She trusts his judgment, but that doesn't mean she's not going to try to sway the decision in her favor.

"Make me come. Please. I need—"

"Breathe. The way you do when you do yoga."

Eventually, reluctantly, she does. Deep. Slow. Easing the tension she would rather break.

He's essentially commanding her to abandon herself on the edge, and she wonders if there has ever been a torture so cruel, so sweet.

He's teased her this way before—in brief, successive increments. She knows, vaguely, what's to come. It's only a matter of how long he believes they can last. Usually he's the first to break because he can't stand to leave her in limbo, but then he's already held out longer than she might have expected and it seems the true teasing is only beginning.

He wipes his face with the corner of the bath towel beneath her, then opens a bottle and squirts some liquid into his hands. He leans over her and massages it into her breasts, occasionally lifting them by the nipples and letting the tender mounds fall back into place even as her nipples become all the more erect.

She sighs, and he says, "Maybe someday I'll make you come just by playing with your tits."

But as fun as that sounds, that isn't going to happen right now. So she pleads for him to do something, anything that will actually get her off; tells him it's been so long now and she needs it, needs more.

"That'll take some training, though," he adds, ignoring her as he goes on kneading her breasts and torturing her nipples.

And yes, the sensations are good, but they're not the reason her heart is hammering away in her heaving chest. If he keeps this up, she may come just from what he says; the tantalizing ideas, the implicit promises. Musings about how easy it might be to unravel her, even if it's some other time.

The fact that she can tell just from his voice that he'd enjoy it just as much as she would.

As she looks past her parted breasts, now glistening in the dim light, and down the planes of her stomach, she catches him staring at her core.

"You're so open," he tells her. "You must want a cock inside you."

Unf. _"Yes."_

"No," he says, but it isn't so bad, because he's slipping a finger inside her, or maybe two—she can't really tell. She just knows that, each time he enters her, the sensation of fullness gets better and better and she's whimpering again and she almost doesn't care how embarrassed she is. She whines despairingly as he withdraws from her.

"Do you like my fingers?" he asks, squirting some more lube into his hands and slicking it along her folds, as though she isn't dripping already. "Because you just took four of them."

She thinks she might be saying yes or maybe _meep_, but either way he seems to get the message, and then his fingers are inside her pussy again and—oh. She knows this feeling.

He's done it before. Only once, but the fullness is hard to forget.

His fingers fold into a fist that twists and moves within her. Not thrusting; just stroking her walls, filling her insides. His free hand continues to caress her breasts and tease her nipples, pinching and pulling the peaks one at a time. He pinches one and twists it just as the fist inside her twists once more, the combination sending her into a spiral of sensation.

And she can't believe it. Her pussy is pulsing around his hand. Her thighs lock. Her back arches. Her feet point into the high-heels that she isn't wearing. She moans, "I'm gonna . . . gonna . . ."

"Breathe," he orders, carefully withdrawing his hand from her pussy and briefly massaging her clit.

And she obeys.

Her body is buzzing. She can't even lift her torso right now, so she stays on her back, straining to hear what he's doing. She thinks she hears him open a wrapper and she's overjoyed at the implication. The subtle sound has never made her so happy.

He dispenses a little more lube, but he's not putting it on her, so—oh, yes. He touches his slicked, wrapped cock to her core, and with only a shift of her hips, she tries to coax it inside. He draws out the process just a little longer as though to spite her.

But then he's inside her, and it's not the same kind of fullness that his fist was. It's more familiar, more fantastic all at once.

He leans over her, against her, into her, and rests his forearms on either side of her head; his elbows hold her shoulders in place while he fucks her hard enough to make her slide up the bed.

_Creak creak creak._

He kisses her neck, her lips. She can taste herself.

She knows now that she can't take it for granted that he will give it to her so easily, and this time when she begs and pleads, she doesn't tell him what she needs; doesn't fall back on the habit of _please Rick please_. She honestly wants his permission now. She wants him to tell her to come for him.

"Close," she whispers, hearing it curl into a whimper. "Can I—? Can I come?"


	8. Chapter 8

He changes his angle and his rhythm, and if she had any breath she would cry; it's such a dick move when he _knows _the last thing was working for her. She feels her body backing down, and she figures she can work with this; she's rebuilt before, and she can do it again. She just needs him to . . . not do what he's doing.

He rises up on his hands and pulls out, disposing of the condom.

"No, you may not," he says, crawling back up along her side and tenderly touching her face. "But thank you for asking." He takes her chin in his hand and kisses her.

She feels a strange sense of pride and accomplishment. She likes it. It feels right; nothing has felt so right in so long—except that a voice inside names her a traitor, and its command center is her unsatisfied, weeping pussy.

This is war. But whose side is she on?

Then Rick pulls her from her moral crisis. "Do you need to pee?"

The thought of need refocuses her. There's only one thing she actually needs right now, but she only says no.

He retrieves a warm, damp cloth from the bathroom and sits at her hips, cleaning the lube from her breasts and washing away the mess between her legs. He uses part of the towel beneath her to dry her off and plants a chaste kiss on her vulva. "Get dressed," he says. "T-shirt, panties, and shorts by the time I get back." He directs her to shift so he can take the towel and wash cloth with him.

When he's gone, she gathers her clothing and dresses herself as quickly as her aching body allows. All the while, she wonders how much time she has. She's still so turned on she might be able to get herself off before he comes back.

He hasn't fully closed the door and she can hear the sink run—she imagines he's washing her off of his face and hands—and then she hears him piss. By the time she clambers back to bed, the toilet flushes, and she knows it's too late.

She watches innocently as he returns to the bedroom and puts on boxers and a T-shirt. He turns out the light and snuggles in with her, telling her again how well she did and how pleased he is.

She quells her happy heart and brushes her fingertips along her inner thighs, gently enough not to rustle the sheet.

He can't guard her forever.

She waits a long, long time for him to fall asleep before she touches herself, heart set on a good clitoral orgasm. She's gotten pretty good at a constant flicking motion that seems almost too easy compared to all the tricky business Castle tends to think she needs. She spreads her labia and sets to work, keeping an eye on her bedmate.

He doesn't seem to pose any threat.

But there's still one problem. Well, three.

She's let her nails grow longer, and right now she regrets it. She's incredibly wet again—good for partnered play, but too slick for a proper solo session. And, after everything she's been through tonight, she's oversensitive as fuck. She's her own worst enemy.

She bites back a sob; tries to beat the odds the perfect storm has set.

Until Rick wakes up. Or maybe he's been awake all along. She doesn't know and it kills her that her instincts can't tell her for sure but she is just so overrun with need and want and need that she doesn't care so long as he redeems himself now for leaving her hanging this long.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm _horny_." In all the time they've been together, she's never said it quite so bluntly before. It almost feels like a release in and of itself.

He slips his finger inside her panties but withdraws the moment he touches wetness. "I know." His voice isn't cruel, insensitive; it sounds like an invitation to trust him, and it almost softens her—almost. He takes both of her hands in his, holding her wrists close together and sweeping his thumbs over her open palms, softly kissing her fingers and urging her to sleep.

She's frustrated and exhausted and she finally concedes, letting herself relax enough to rest, but her final conscious thoughts are anything but peaceful. She's sure she'll wake up in the morning and the moment will have passed, and if he wants to play, she'll tell him he can go fuck himself.

Except that isn't at all what happens.

She wakes to wetness between her legs. It takes her a minute to realize that it's not only her juices, but the sloppy wet suck of Rick's mouth over her shorts, pushing the fabric of her panties against her slit and soaking her clothing inside and out.

She wishes he would take them off, because this sensation is good but it's not enough and she needs _more_.

Or so she thinks.

Because, just like that, she can feel it coiling within her already.

She barely even hears him asking: "Did you have any sex dreams last night?"


	9. Chapter 9

"No, I don't know," she groans. "I don't remember." It's true. She knows it sounds like a lie, but it's true.

"That's okay," he easily replies, and fingers the waistband of her shorts. "Is direct contact too much, or can we take these off?"

Honestly? She's still a bit sensitive from last night, but not nearly as over-stimulated as she was by the time she tried to touch herself, so—

Fuck it.

She lets him peel off her shorts and panties both, baring her tenderness.

Without the growing weight of exhaustion, the sexual tension rebuilding inside her feels more like an indulgence than a punishment. She shifts eagerly for him.

"By the way," he says as he strips her, "these were _supposed_ to help. I know how turned on you get whenever you wear anything less."

"Backfired," she agrees, and then his lips and tongue are soft and strong against her core.

"If you have no dreams to share, I want to hear your fantasies."

She hesitates, gathers herself. It's always easier to confess to a dream that came upon her than to one she consciously enjoys. At moments like this, she's a woman of few words. "Floating," she says. "But it's been so long, and I don't know how . . ."

"Don't worry about that," he hushes, all the while coaxing her further. "Only the fantasies; tell me." He lifts enough to take off his shirt and tosses it aside before leaning his sexy self into her again.

She's let him work too many interrogations—professional and private. She loves and hates that he's learned so much so quickly. She's quietly proud of him, but she's supposed to have several years of investigative experience on him and it doesn't always show. Especially when she's twisted into a knot that only he can untie.

She isn't going to fight him on this. She knows well enough what it is he wants to hear; what she needs to say. Everything inside her is begging her to say it out loud if only to see that it won't destroy her.

As though he can sense that she's about to speak, he leans his elbow on the bed and rests his chin in one hand as he stimulates her with the other; divides his attention only to attend doubly to her: to touch and listen.

"No bindings," she confesses. "Nothing to hide behind while you take me."

The first and only time she admitted it—a few weeks ago—she was cuffed wrists-to-ankles on her bed. She knows she's just as uninhibited with arousal now as she was then, but it's an entirely different experience to say it here, unfettered.

She owns it now.

What she did. What she said. What she wanted.

No way to pretend she doesn't have a choice; no way to let the bindings do the work of submission. Nothing to keep her from facing herself.

And then Rick leads a new conversation, licking and kissing her lower lips, slicking the skin with something of her and something of him.

The more intense the sensations he inflicts, the more he looks up, reads her with his eyes. Here, he's a good but greedy conversationalist. Apart from what he reads, she won't get a word in edgewise.

Anything she says now is unintelligible, wrought with aching passion. Never mind speaking; she struggles to breathe as he suckles her clit. Energy hums and thrums through her extremities; threatens to turn twitching to thrashing long before she ever peaks.

He holds her high, near that all too familiar edge, his movements lingering just beneath the threshold he must cross to take her over completely.

When he looks up, licking his lips, he's beaming. "I see you've resolved the internal conflict." He thrusts a finger inside her pussy, and soon he's hitting that spot she's never quite reached without a man or a toy.

He kisses her inner thigh, and suddenly she wonders if his storytelling was nothing but a diversion, a red herring in itself; setting her mind on the kind of culmination that she is less and less sure that she will have, all the while working her up to win the inner battle he knew she still needed to fight.

She honestly doesn't know how this will end, but even as she writhes at his touch, she offers no petitions. She's willing to accept whatever story Rick is spinning for her; to trust that he'll attend to her wellbeing no matter what the outcome.

With his fingers still at work on her, he leans in along her side. She clings to him, one hand brushing his ribs and one sliding down the nape of his neck; their foreheads not quite close enough to touch in that way that reassures her.

He meets her eyes for but a moment before he kisses her lips, so reminiscent of their first; that look of his, wordlessly telling her what he was about to do that cold, dark night. Only, this time, in the warm glow of morning, he interrupts her soft moan to whisper in her ear: "I'm going to make you come now."


	10. Chapter 10

The promise alone is nearly enough to thrust her over the edge. Surprise is sweet; trusting him in the face of the unknown is freedom; but hearing him say exactly what he intends to do to her? Pure aural sex. His movements haven't changed, but her pussy spasms readily around his fingers, ever closer to coming at his command.

She feels traces of the floating phenomenon that she has never experienced from orgasm alone, but her body still craves that physical release; she's almost traveling, but she's still tethered to the present moment, to the basic need.

He kisses her neck, kisses her lips one last time; begins to shift back down the bed, but somehow she can't bring herself to let go of him so easily and he ends up kissing her palm as it trails along his jaw. Then he resituates at her center, pushing her thighs apart and resting her legs on his bare shoulders.

He's warm and thorough and her limbs are locked, her fingers tingling. Her breathing becomes so ragged that once again verbal communication is severely limited; he's making her pant and sigh and moan and he was right—she knows it's exactly what he wants.

One leg slips down his sweaty shoulder and he catches it, finger-painting her outer thigh with her wetness.

He looks up at her; he's watching her quake, watching her brows furrow, and some small part of her is self-conscious. Not about her contorted expression or the screams she knows he takes as a compliment, but the sheer magnitude of her reactions, inescapable and unrestrained.

The fact that she couldn't lessen them if she tried.

The fact that she's not trying.

And then she's wound too tight to care at all. If anything, watching him watching her is starting to turn her on even more. The eye contact is more than intimate. She sees the extent of her arousal reflected back to her; sees Castle's awe of her, of what he can do to her. Words are beyond her, but she knows she's asking him with her eyes if he can believe what the fuck is happening to her right now because, even for a skeptic like her, this feeling is the height of unbelievable.

She tries to hold on, tries to have the best of both the world where she is and the world where she is going. She wants to see Rick's eyes shining in the early light even as she drifts from here.

But then she's thrashing, the strength of his arms the only thing holding her hips in place; without thinking, she shoves the pillows away and her head tips back until she can't see him anymore. It isn't for lack of trying; no amount of physical training could have prepared her body to fight the way her back arches under the intensity of her release, hitting her harder than ever before, wracking her body with so much relief it almost hurts to feel the difference.

All she can do is claw the linen and dig her heels into his back and cry out as he makes good on his word.

He works her down from it; easing his motions without ever ceasing, and before she's even capable of coherent speech, before she's even stopped trembling with the aftershocks, he's gently rebuilding her.

He gets her to another plateau, and she can't even fathom how her body has enough energy to fight through the sensitivity and gather that kind of tension after the orgasm she's just had. He sits up, letting his fingers maintain just enough stimulation to drive her wild with renewed need, and says, "That was good, what you told me. But of course you realize I already knew that one. Now tell me one I don't know."

Her mind races; latches onto an old fantasy that sometimes recurs whenever they're bickering, whenever she hates him a little. She's thought of it more than once since last night. Even though he's quickly redeeming himself, she thinks of it again.

"Last year," she pants, and damn does that get his attention. Has he ever perked up so much at two little words? "You were being such a jackass and all I wanted to do was fuck your brains out."

"See," he says smugly. "You do like the jackass side of me."

"No. I wanted to fuck your brains out so you'd _stop _being a jackass."

"Oh, did you just say to stop?"

_"No," _she groans emphatically, lest he decide to follow through on the implicit threat.

He doesn't stop. He only smiles. "So tell me just how you planned to fuck my brains out."


	11. Chapter 11

She's never been one to use her words. As far as she's concerned, she's said enough already.

But she can elaborate if that's what he really wants.

She moves, and at first his fingers move with her, but then they slide free of her and she seizes the opportunity to tackle Castle properly. She strips off his boxers while he shifts his hips. There's a difference between compliance and control, and she intends for him to experience that firsthand.

He sounds too cocky to make her think she's succeeded yet. "I get it," he says as she pins him to the bed. "You're showing me. That's good. 'Show, don't tell,' right? So go ahead. Fuck me."

It only strengthens her resolve to render him speechless.

She straddles his lap, not a scrap of clothing between them except for the T-shirt she's still wearing; it's slicked to her back with a thin layer of sweat. While she massages his balls and strokes his length, he helps himself beneath her shirt, blindly caressing her stomach and the curves of her breasts.

She can't help it; the harder he tugs at her tits, the harder she squeezes his cock. Before either of them reaches a death-grip, he scales back to a warm caress until he's simply supporting the soft weight of her in his hands and sliding his thumbs over her hardening nipples. She scales back to gentler strokes, too, until one hand remains wrapped around the head while her thumb smears the wetness gathering on the tip.

He jokes: "You're even easier to train than I thought." He leans up on his elbows but she shoves him back down flat, abandoning his lap to reach down and rummage around the shelf of his nightstand.

"Where . . ."

"This?" he asks, and when she looks back, he's holding up a condom wrapper. "Other side," he says before she can even ask, and she narrows her eyes at him.

She pushes up onto her hands and knees, takes the silver square from him like she's taking back something that's hers, and settles again over his lap.

By the time he's sheathed and lubed and ready for her, he folds his arms up over his head and rests back against his hands in a classic lounging pose. "Anytime you're ready to st—"

She swallows his cock with her lower lips; swallows his half-spoken word. She couldn't be happier at the reaction. His words are his strength, his power, and without even speaking she has claimed that from him.

But not for very long.

He growls, "Stop hiding these from me," and pushes the hem of her shirt up so it rests above her breasts, baring them to his sight. She swears he grows an inch inside her in that moment alone.

Just as he cups her, she pulls her shirt off the rest of the way and tosses it aside; there's no use fighting to keep it down, so she may as well decide when it comes off.

Rick only hums approvingly and entices her nipples into twin erections while she lifts and lowers and gyrates on his cock.

"You like that?" she asks, her voice seductive and teasing in yet another effort to dominate that quickly falls flat.

"You please me well," he says, not at all the helpless answer she expected. This is more like the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head and she doesn't hate it. He's filling her with the wrong kind of pride, and even as his answer warms her inside, all she wants to do is reduce him to a puddle of fuck.

So she surrenders words to him and focuses on her own strengths—her legs and pelvic muscles. Rick's made it no secret in the past that he's impressed with her endurance in this position and she uses that to her advantage, taking her sweet time to build him up, getting him closer and closer to the edge without letting him fall.

Turnabout has never been more delicious.

She draws a groan from him and she thinks she's won until he speaks again.

"That's it. Tease me," he says, as though she simply followed a command he was about to issue anyway.

He holds onto her hips, and for a moment she thinks he's going to override her; direct her where he wants her to go. But he's simply holding her, letting her define their pace and pleasure; letting her hit all of the spots that work best for her.

"You like that," he says, and it isn't lost on her that he can say the same words and achieve an entirely different effect.

If she wasn't close already, she is now. And he can tell.

She knows by the look in his eye, even before he says: "Come on. Come all over me. Show me how much you like to be on top. Come for me. Now. Right now."

And she does.


	12. Chapter 12

What is it about hearing her favorite author whisper pornographic dialogue in her ear that can send her over the edge? He could craft a love story for the ages and yet, in the heat of the moment, nothing excites her more than hearing all those naughty, cheesy things even his publishers won't accept from him—not unless he intends to follow Jameson Rook into the world of writing bodice-rippers.

She rides out the wave while he keeps whispering in her ear, and then she understands.

These words are reserved only for her.

There is a certain charm about the love letters he writes to her in the form of novels released to the public, but nothing can compare to the secrets they keep together; to the language they unleash when they are most passionate, most primal.

She doesn't even register that she whimpers until Rick tucks back her hair and asks, "What's wrong?"

"I was trying to fuck your brains out."

He smiles. "Believe me. There are glorious things I will never un-see. My brain is well fucked."

"But what about the other head?" she asks, rotating her hips around his erection, lifting and lowering again. She's working hard to work him up until her leg spasms and cramps. Sitting on top has its perks. This is not one of them.

He guides her off of him and helps her stretch her muscles. Before she even sits up he tells her he's going to fuck her from behind. She can barely get onto her hands and knees fast enough.

He pets her back, fingertips sliding down the sweat along her spine, and then he spanks her ass, one swat to her right cheek that's too gentle to sting but surprising enough to make her gasp.

It's no punishment; it never is. It's unspoken gratitude for prompt cooperation and, she hopes, a promise of what's to come.

She remembers that night with the leather cuffs; her face-down on the bed, her wrists bound to her ankles.

Her confessions. Her fantasies. Giving them up to Rick to do with as he wished.

The deliciously dirty things he said to her, things she might find tasteless or vulgar or cliché if she weren't in just the right mood to hear them in bed.

The way he entered her, filled her; the weight of his balls against her clit when he was buried deep.

The way he spanked her ass—too lightly, always too lightly, but with just enough of a steady rhythm that she could still get lost in it.

The way it felt to slip away into a moment of ecstasy before Rick pulled her out of it, startled by her altered state. That was the first time she floated, before she even had a name for it.

She tried to explain it to him as best as she could.

And when that didn't work, she told him a story.

When she was about sixteen, she got caught in a rip current at the beach, pulled from shore. Fortunately, she'd known not to try to swim back against it; that resisting that instinct was the only way to spare herself from drowning in exhaustion. At first it was too strong to do anything but ride it, so she treaded water, floated. She conserved her strength until she could swim parallel to the coastline to escape the current, and then returned almost effortlessly to land on the backs of broken waves.

Fighting the rip current of submissive desire is exhausting, she said. But she never understood it that way until the night that she experienced floating. It's an experience she simply cannot have on land; it is worth the risk of chasing it, the challenge of surrendering to it.

He was hesitant at first, but her man can appreciate a metaphor. If it was important to her, he wanted to help her get there. He just wasn't sure how to do that.

"Whatever it takes," she told him. "You know me, Castle. You know my limits. I trust you."

Since that one night, she's never had the same experience from sex in this position, or from being bound or interrogated or spanked or seduced with words. No matter what they've done, they've never gotten her to float again.

Today is everything that day was, except that she is unbound and, for the first time, he has not satisfied her every chance he's had just because he could. The presence of mind and willpower that this requires of both of them has been intoxicating.

He pushes into her and she's right there with him, pushing back against him, taking him into herself. She feels all the more dominated after having just been on top—or maybe it's the culmination of all of the ways he's built up her mindset in the past day.

_Smack._

A second one. She thinks, oh God, let it last.

And when there's a third, she believes it will.

She wishes he would spank her harder, but she doesn't say so; just lets him be in the moment. Sometimes submission is letting him push her further toward the edge of what she can handle; sometimes it is accepting his pace and intensity even when it is slower and sweeter than she would have it, because in this moment, it really is up to him.

She is absorbed in him now. There is nothing else but him and her and the noises and sensations. She doesn't even think about climaxing or floating; only where they are right now.

_Smack._ The slightest bit more intense, but it throws off his thrusting rhythm half a beat and he needs a moment to recover it.

She gives him the moment; if she can, she'll give him all the time he needs to get this right.


	13. Chapter 13

"I wonder if you have another one in you," he says, and she can't understand why he's _talking _while he's working out the balance of spanking and fucking.

She enjoys his curiosities, but she's also got priorities. She vocalizes at him, a wordless and frustrated sound.

"What? I like working on a good series."

She groans, but it's not from the bad line—one he's used before in not so different circumstances. She's waiting on a joke about a new release when he spanks her focus right back to where it should be.

It's harder this time, harder than any of the others, and he takes time to soothe her skin before he goes in for another at a lesser intensity. He settles into a rhythm and a pattern, building up incrementally: less, same, more, less, same, even more. She savors each strike even as she hungers for the next.

He reaches underneath her, touches her breasts, and she leans into the touch until she lowers her upper body right to the bed. "You liked the idea that I might make you come just from playing with your tits, didn't you?"

One of his hands wanders off to play with her clit while the other comes down on her ass.

Her only response is a resounding moan. The words, the images, his flesh pounding into her. She's so close she's as good as gone.

"But would you really like that, or would you miss this too much?" he pants. "Would you miss being fucked?"

_Smack._

The word, the thrust, and the hand all converge on her at once. She feels her pussy contracting around his cock, and then her world is turned inside out and she's somewhere in the sea.

She's finally floating, giving herself over to the current that she has both craved and resisted for so long. When it's time to drift out of it, she'll swim parallel, and Rick will be there waiting on the shore.

And he is.

* * *

She comes back to Coltrane. It's instrumental at this point, but she quickly recognizes the melody, even in her semi-delirious state. _My One and Only Love_. She listens, soaking in the sultry saxophone, and sure enough Hartman finally croons that the very thought of her makes his heart sing_._ All the while, Rick's snuggled close, kissing her shoulder and stroking her arm and adjusting the warm blanket that he's already pulled up over them. She faintly remembers getting cold, but not for very long. His response time is impressive for a civilian.

"Hey," he says in greeting, reaching behind him for something. He proffers a glass of water she vaguely recalls seeing earlier on the bedside table. It makes her realize not only that he's prepared to meet her needs before she ever voices them, but also that he hasn't left her side. "Drink this."

He holds the glass even as she takes it and sips, and she's grateful, because she's still getting a feel for using her hands to do something besides reach for him or rearrange pillows. She swallows and he sets the glass down, half-full.

He touches her face, tucks a damp tendril of hair behind her ear. "You went back?"

"Mm." It means yes, she knows what he means, and he's right.

Then Hartman has a heaven that he's never known; his rich singing voice fills her with recognition, letting her remember what it was to float even as she washes ashore.

"Thank you," she murmurs, "for letting me go." _There; for letting me go there,_ she thinks, but he's just going to have to fill in the blanks himself until she's regained her linguistic skills, and she thinks he can handle that. She thinks he can handle anything.

He doesn't seem quite as sure.

"Of course," he says, but even though it's such a certain thing to say, she sees something like uncertainty in his eyes, and she doesn't understand it; doesn't know what else to do with it except to give him a sloppy peck of a kiss and rest her forehead against his while the unresolved sound of jazz enfolds them.

After a moment of harmonic ambiguity, he parts them just enough to see her face. He seems to have reached a better place in himself, even though he's still looking at her like he's scripted a conversation she'll never read. He only asks, "Was it as good as the other time?"

She smiles lazily at him before she sinks into the blanket, curling into his chest.

"Good," he replies as easily as if she'd spoken.

As the song nears its end, she hears the singer's gentle declaration of sweet surrender with the backbeat of her lover's heart.

He wraps his arms around her, wraps her in love and warmth and safety, everything she needs as she comes back to him, to where they are. She thinks she feels something in him hesitate, something unsure and unsaid, but she soon forgets it because the words he does say are so perfectly open and free and meant only for her—for the person she's able to be when she's here with him: "I'm happy for you, Kate."

She wonders how he can speak her name and still make it sound like a song. It's only one little syllable, but hearing it now makes the fragments inside her seem to shift into place.

The pieces fit. Her name fits. Some bit of her makes a little more sense. She feels like she's where she belongs. She wonders if any of this is how he feels, after everything they've been through, after everything they've done, but doesn't ask.

Sometime—when she finds the voice for it—she will.

For now, they stay there together, holding onto one another for a long time, even longer than the music lasts.

* * *

_Follow me on Twitter for fic updates, notes on writing, and behind-the-story posts: RachelCAstrid_

___Look for more to come in the Unresolved universe. I post here at FFnet and Archive of Our Own._

_Thanks for reading and reviewing!_


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